Spinal cord monitoring during scoliosis surgery using somatosensory evoked potentials

摘要

Scoliosis is a major surgery to correct spinal deformity, which carries a significant risk of permanent neurological damage due to lesions of the spinal cord. Injury of the spinal cord is irreversible. In order to avoid the lesion, it is important to employ a system to monitor the status of spinal cord during such operations. Intraoperative monitoring of somatosensory evoked potentials (SEP) is a significant technique that has shown considerable promise and it can greatly improve the margin of safety during surgical procedures around the spine[1]. The permanent damage to the nervous system could be avoided if the change of SEP could be detected. In this paper, we described the system and algorithms developed to fast measure SEP for real time monitoring spinal cord.